Ben Affleck’s 2003 Forecast for Streaming Hits the Mark

There’s been plenty of chat lately about the state of the film industry, with some folks worried it’s on the decline. The much-hyped promo blitz for Timothée Chalamet’s upcoming flick, Marty Supreme, is a case in point—he’s everywhere, even on top of the Las Vegas Sphere, spruiking the film to anyone who’ll listen. It’s a sign of the times, really. Streaming platforms have been shaking up not just films, but music too, and it’s been happening faster than most of us expected.

But if you look back, the writing was on the wall long before Netflix and Spotify took over. In 2003, Ben Affleck had a crack at predicting where things were headed, and he wasn’t far off. This was years before Spotify launched, and Netflix was still a DVD-by-mail service. Affleck, spotting the way things were shifting, said in a resurfaced interview,

‘I believe that the industry has been too slow to embrace and adopt these paradigms. If you look historically at consumer-based technologies, you have basically shareware that introduces the consumer to it at no cost. At which point, the consumer is on the hook. They figured it out, they worked out the kinks, they figured out how to interact with it and how to exploit.’

Spotting the Digital Shift Early

He went on,

‘And then you charge a fee, and the consumer is willing to pay that fee. I think an annual subscription-based system is one that works.’

At the time, music was in the middle of a digital shake-up, with Apple’s iTunes leading the charge. But even then, punters had to buy whole albums to get their hands on the tracks. The idea of having a digital library at your fingertips was just starting to catch on.

Affleck used the music business as an example, saying,

‘We have the music business, which is a $3.4 billion dollar-a-year business, which is largely about 1.7 million people in the country spending $200 a year. Those same people would spend those $200 each year to have access to basically the entire library of existing music, and of course, you re-up your subscription because you continue to pay for new music.’

He reckoned that with this model, artists would see more direct royalties, and there’d be less overhead—no need for shipping, packaging, or paying a heap of execs to take a cut.

Streaming’s Impact on Creators and Audiences

Affleck’s take was spot on for the time, and he was keen to see a fairer, more sustainable way for films to make the jump to digital. But as things played out, tech giants and their CEOs found ways to make content dirt cheap for viewers, often leaving musicians and cinemas out in the cold.

These days, streaming services have become the norm. Netflix, for example, now boasts a market cap of $143.7 billion and more than 230 million subscribers worldwide. Meanwhile, UK cinemas in 2024 managed to pull in a record 126.5 million admissions—still only about half the number of Netflix’s global subscribers.

Changing Habits and the Future of Entertainment

The shift to digital has changed the way locals consume music and films. Subscription models have made it easier than ever to access massive libraries of content, but the benefits haven’t always flowed back to the creators. While Affleck’s vision was for a system that worked for everyone, the reality has been a bit more complicated, with big tech often taking the lion’s share.

As the industry keeps evolving, it’s clear that Affleck’s early predictions were more than just a lucky guess. He saw the direction things were heading, and now, more than two decades later, his words ring truer than ever.